• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Steam Sets New Record with Over 34 Million Concurrent Users

Fess

Member
Weird how every other platform peaked during Covid then dipped and Steam just keeps getting bigger

fans-react-to-icarly-revival-embracing-interesting-meme.jpeg.jpeg
That is interesting. I’m sure some bought PCs, or received them from work, to be able to work from home and then found out you could also play games on them.
 

Sentenza

Gold Member
So that would mean Mibu no ookami Mibu no ookami and me are right that sony is loosing big time by not doing their own store. Who would have thought.
That would be under the bizarre assumption that customers would follow Sony in mass on "their own store".

Also, these constant attempt to identify "which game exactly" drove the Steam user base to growth are a bit pointless, given that the platform has never stopped growing since its inception in 2003.
The answer is "all of them". Steam is growing because it's a reliable reference point for hundred of popular game (and their players), not for the contribution of any single one in particular.
 
Last edited:

DaciaJC

Gold Member
I constantly shit on both if its something that I dislike. You know you can like something and still have criticism for something. Never saw criticism from steam fanboys tho.

Of course, but in this thread and others, you seem oddly hostile towards Steam, even arguing (if I interpreted your posts correctly) in favor of an exclusive Sony PC storefront instead of consumer choice. I find your choice of avatar a little funny in that respect.
 
PS5 is never gonna catch up to Steam this generation or ever again. Steam went from being used by a minority of people in the PS2 era to becoming popular but much smaller than than the PS3 in the 360/PS3 era to matching the PS4 in the Xbox One/PS4 era to being so big the PS5 will never catch up in the PS5 era, Sony themselves expect to sell around 110-120mil PS5s which already can't match the current number of monthly active Steam users even if every PS5 was turned on every month which we know doesn't happen because A) PS5s break B) PS5s get put into storage C) PS5s become inactive like my brother's currently is.


Steam has become scary big.
 
But since PC users are huge... Should Steam users be bigger than that?

I mean, Steam is a free account and even has free games. GamePass is subscription and is also around 30 million too
No this is concurrent users i.e users all on at the same time. What you're describing is active users which is tracked by the monthly active users metric which Steam has north of 120mil users (actually more than that now but Valve doesn't report it often but it coincides with this metric and if concurrents go up so do monthly active I.e that figure is much bigger now than last reported). It's so many at this point PS5 will never catch up because even if PS5 sells 120mil consoles not all of those will be usable (i.e some eventually break), nor active and even if active they may not be active every month.
 

StereoVsn

Member
This is great to hear and I hope it keeps going. Valve has the best PC platform in Steam, invests into actually making it better vs wasting cash on exclusives, supports Linux, provides a VR platform, best in class by far controller support and much much more.

Kudos to Valve and Gaben, may he live long and prosper.
 
Last edited:

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Enjoy steam and I’m not even a hardcore Pc gamer. I just buy casual stuff for $10 or less an old Pc rig can even run. Just did my first refund request and got it approved by the next morning.

Only things that suck are:

1. GOG has lots of oldies not on steam. If they were it would be even better for streamlining my launchers.

2. The steam UI is a monolith of pull down menus and settings. Takes getting used to. I even googled how to find or use features instead of just dabbling myself.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
At this point, I am beginning to count what "evil" decisions has this company ever made in the face of just consistent amazing decisions and support.
Screenshot-2024-03-03-203432.png
That’s what happens when you got a good product. And amazingly, I think the company hardly has any people working there, and they seem to do hardly any or zero advertising.

They kind of remind of Costco in a way. Basically zero advertising, have product at a good price with a good refund policy, and you get tons of loyal customers.

Both companies do great and neither one risks doing anything crazy pissing off customers trying to take advantage of their popularity. They probably could do some stuff to customers to anger then and still grow but they don’t.
 

Zathalus

Member
Personally I don't think Helldivers 2 or people leaving Xbox is the reason for the growth. If you check the chart it has been a steady growth for years now. I believe the majority of growth (but not all) is coming from China:


That Chinese % of total users has been growing fast.
 

Fess

Member
Personally I don't think Helldivers 2 or people leaving Xbox is the reason for the growth. If you check the chart it has been a steady growth for years now. I believe the majority of growth (but not all) is coming from China:


That Chinese % of total users has been growing fast.
I think you’re right. Was linked to wayback machine on reddit, what you’re saying can be seen there.


Also, found an article that said the stats were flawed for awhile because of how internet cafés could send out data multiple times or something like that. The survey should probably not be used like a scientific research.
 

Bkdk

Member
It's crazy how valve's valuation among private investors is only 10 billion while ATVI is worth so much more lol. Valve alone should easily worth more than ATVI+ EA together.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
So that would mean Mibu no ookami Mibu no ookami and me are right that sony is loosing big time by not doing their own store. Who would have thought.
I do not think Sony knows how to manage one on a platform they do not fully control and Steam is so much more than a store, it is an ecosystem (using Steam Deck you see that at play). They arguably had the best music store with Sony Connect and mismanaged it to oblivion.

Maybe if they bought CDPR and thus GoG.com and increased their stake in Epic to a controlling one and fused GoG and EGS together… maybe… they would have a decent foothold.

I am more worried about MS tried to purchase Valve and poisoning the whole thing, so I would want someone competing with MS to get together with Valve if anyone had to.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
Personally I don't think Helldivers 2 or people leaving Xbox is the reason for the growth. If you check the chart it has been a steady growth for years now. I believe the majority of growth (but not all) is coming from China:


That Chinese % of total users has been growing fast.
3C73BFe.gif
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
And people are still questioning whether bigger moves into the PC space for console makers is the right choice. Come on.
 

Hohenheim

Member
I have begun prepping my wife for my eventual shift to PC.

Should have a top-end rig once I learn more. Couple years tops.
I love that you need a couple of years to prepare your wife for this life-changing event!

When I upgraded to my 4090-rig last year, I just put it up when my gf was out of the house, and she still haven't noticed any difference :) As long as she don't ask me about the price, i'm a happy camper!

Edit: or did you mean that the shift is to replace your wife with a PC? In that case I guess it's good to prepare her a bit!
 
Last edited:

ByWatterson

Member
I love that you need a couple of years to prepare your wife for this life-changing event!

When I upgraded to my 4090-rig last year, I just put it up when my gf was out of the house, and she still haven't noticed any difference :) As long as she don't ask me about the price, i'm a happy camper!

Edit: or did you mean that the shift is to replace your wife with a PC? In that case I guess it's good to prepare her a bit!

Ha.

When you've been married as long (and successfully!) as I have, and you have expensive, tiny humans around, you have to sort of prep each other for large purchases. Cars, televisions, etc.

This is how I get an OLED I don't need a couple months ago, for instance.

Don't need permission - but it's MUCH better to build genuine support.
 

Hohenheim

Member
Ha.

When you've been married as long (and successfully!) as I have, and you have expensive, tiny humans around, you have to sort of prep each other for large purchases. Cars, televisions, etc.

This is how I get an OLED I don't need a couple months ago, for instance.

Don't need permission - but it's MUCH better to build genuine support.
Totally agree!
It just read a bit funny. I'll definitly do a bit of the same when i'm upgrading to a 5090 at some point.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
34 million people... all those datapoints. Seemingly nobody uses firewalls anymore. The first thing I do is kick steam into a dark corner, firewall its arse big time and only let it talk to the internet when I hear that it wants some air.

Or you could just not opt-in to sending your information to Steam.

Just Saying Bernie Sanders GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
I think this is a big part of it. PS5 and Xbox need to justify their existence by funding these big showpiece AAA games that aren’t possible on previous hardware. Steam doesn’t have that problem. Even a mid-budget game that can run on 15 year old hardware can be a killer app for many gamers.

Right now I’m playing Last Epoch which sells for $35 (I got it for $20 by supporting early access) and I’m having way more fun with that than I did with any of Sony’s massive blockbuster games this gen. Yet if this game were some exclusive PlayStation flagship it would get mocked endlessly because it could easily pass as a PS3 game.
that's it right there. Games like Grim dawn release (titan quest devs redoing thier engine with a new setting) and i play it for 100s of hours multiple builds meanwhile console people have no idea it even exists. It eventually came out on xbox, where i am playing it again, at the couch. PC gets stuff like that all the time. Right now I am waiting for Manor Lords, which is a medieval city builder and rts (total war / mount and blade style). Games like enshrouded come and out and don't have to sell 10 millon copies to be successful. It doesnt' cost as much to develop as most pc gamers would rather gameplay over graphics.

I can say its similar to nintendo, releasing tons of smaller games on the platform that would be mocked on ps5/xbx. On that end I am playing Shiren 6 that released silently alongside ff7rebirth. A game with ps1 era graphics but the game oozes soul, fun and addictiviness with none of the console behemoth issues like micros, f2p, gaas, always online, etc..
 
On one hand the pricing of everything is getting ridiculous, but on the other you get to choose how you want to use the performance that you have. There have been some headscratcher decisions in regards to IQ on console this gen, where given the choice I think players would turn some things down to avoid the blurriness if at all possible.
 
Top Bottom